Beowulf

High-tech meets high camp in this strangely compelling gorefest
based on the Old English epic poem.

Ray Winstone as Beowulf.

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Genre

Animation, Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Run Time

114 minutes

Rated

M

Country

United States

Director

Robert Zemeckis

Actors

Angelina Jolie, Ray Winstone, Robin Wright Penn, Anthony

Rating

stars-3

In one rather freewheeling translation of the Old English epic
poem, Beowulf, the mother of the monster, Grendel, is
referred to as a "mighty man-eater". It was this job description, I
imagine, that prompted Robert Zemeckis, director of
Beowulf, the film, to put in a call to Angelina Jolie.

And she doesn't disappoint. In the poem, Beowulf, the great
Viking hero, doesn't have much time for sex but the film is quick
to remedy this oversight. As well as packing the script with
innuendos and bad behaviour of all kinds, Zemeckis and his writers
- Neil Gaiman (author of the graphic novel Sandman) and
Roger Avary ( Pulp Fiction) - have given Jolie a siren
suit of gold and a pair of cloven feet with stiletto heels. Yes,
the devil does wear Prada - or near enough. Jolie also remains
unmistakeably herself, which is quite an achievement. Most of her
fellow cast members struggle to make an impression in the face of
Zemeckis's curious decision to do the whole film using the
animation technology known as "performance capture".

As I sketchily comprehend it, this technique requires actors to
work in Lycra bodysuits attached to digital sensors. A battery of
cameras then records their movements and feeds the information into
a computer for the film's graphic artists to expand, distort, dress
and undress. The effects can be spectacular, as with Gollum in
Lord Of The Rings. They can also turn expressive human
beings into robotic creatures whose responses seem to have been
programmed on a time-delay mechanism. If you saw Polar
Express, the last film that Zemeckis did using performance
capture, you'll know what I mean.

This time, however, the technology has added novelty value. It's
been augmented by 3D and you can further hype the experience by
going to the IMAX version. Certainly it's a great improvement on
the last 3D effort I saw - Robert Rodriguez's The Adventures Of
Sharkboy And Lavagirl, when the red and green lenses of the 3D
glasses melded to project the action in assorted shades of grey.
But this is the real thing - in full-colour and in such depth that
many of the images seem to whiz past your ears from some point at
the back at the cinema.

This sense of being in the midst of the action fails to equate
with intimacy, however, which is odd. If Pixar's animators could
persuade us to identify with a cartoon rat in Ratatouille,
you'd think that Zemeckis could do the same with a cast led by Ray
Winstone, Robin Wright Penn and Anthony Hopkins. Yet only those
with the most conspicuous eccentricities stand out. It doesn't take
long, for instance, to see John Malkovich in the sour-faced warrior
Unferth, who skulks around the court of the Danish king Hrothgar,
like the bad fairy at the christening. But the only thing that
alerts you to the presence of Hopkins as the king is the Welsh lilt
and there's no discernible trace of Wright Penn in the square-jawed
android queen.

The script cheerfully ignores the language of the poem and piles
on the anachronisms. These Vikings speak in many accents - a
porridge of them, in fact, which, I suppose, is fitting enough
given that so many of them have names like breakfast cereals.

Even so, nothing quite prepares you for the arrival of
Winstone's Beowulf, a buff blond giant built on the lines of a
video game hero, who hails from Denmark via London's East End,
judging from his majestic command of the glottal stop.

The film's animators are at their best with the monsters,
starting with Grendel, a querulous apparition with a body covered
in suppurating sores as a result of old war wounds. He makes his
first appearance in King Hrothgar's mead hall. The king and his
warriors have enjoyed a long, noisy night of wenching and
wassailing when in sweeps Grendel. Howling with rage and pain, he's
like a complaining neighbour deprived of sleep who's come to bite
somebody's head off - which he proceeds to do. After crunching the
skulls of the revellers, he pelts us, the audience, with the
corpses.

The rest of the plot is arranged around bouts of bloodletting
and in between Beowulf, who becomes king, fights his own battles
with the temptations posed by power and lust - which is where Jolie
and her 24-carat limbs come in.

The showdown, involving a fire-breathing dragon, is an airborne
event that hits the upper reaches of high camp and it's all weirdly
fascinating - a perfect marriage between hi-tech and old-fashioned
cheesiness. No doubt C.B. DeMille, another director with a knack
for turning Hollywood stars into robots, would have been
entranced.